IPS 3525 

1533 
|F5 
'l912 
ICopy 1 



lELD-PATH AND 
HIGHWAY 




mn 



s 



i 



BY E. E. MILLER 




*** vjC *~^ - 

Book._2_IJjZlS' 



COPXRiGm DEPOSm 



FIELD-PATH AND HIGHWAY 



FIELD-PATH AND 
HIGHWAY 



By E. E. miller 




E. E. MILLER 

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA 

1912 






Copyright, iqiz, 

BT 

E. E. Miller. 



(n: ni A *5. Q f! 4 .-> Q 



The Apologp. 

In publishing these Httle sketches — most of 
them reprinted — I am quite complacent in my 
confidence that they will not appeal to those 
who demand action and excitement of the 
books they read. Nor do I expect them to be 
much esteemed by the learned and the critical. 
I am optimistic enough, however, to believe 
that a few people will care for them because I 
wrote them, and to trust that a few others — 
leisurely souls who know the paths through 
the fields and are glad of the sun and the wind 
— will find in them something not wholly for- 
eign to their own thought and experience. 

E. E. M. 



Contents. 

Page. 

An Autumn Ride 9 

The Unchanging Love 19 

"Not Unavailing" 29 

When the Circus Came to Tov/n Z7 

A Teller of Tales 45 

The Master's Discipline 55 

For Love of Margery 61 

Days of Happiness 71 

The Lure of To-Morrow 75 

The Chords of Memory 87 




^n Autumn Ride. 

S I swung the girl into her saddle 
the breeze came over the hilltop 
aromatic with the odors of Sep- 
tember, hints of juicy apples and 
ripened grapes, and the delicate, elusive fra- 
grance of the fields. From far-away purple 
horizons it came, blowing her hair in tiny rip- 
ples about her face, coloring her cheeks, and 
bringing the dancing light of gladness into her 
eyes. Poems have been written about the 
sweetness of the autumnal air — poems touched 
with all the mellow beauty of the season — and 
there remain yet many to be written. 

We did not have time to think of all this, 
however. We were only glad to be alive on 
such a morning — glad to have the sky above us 
and the sunshine in our faces, glad to feel the 
tug of our horses against the reins and the 
swing of their motion beneath us. They, too, 
were fresh and eager. The bracing air was 



to Field-Path and Highway. 

like wine to them as to us. The girl leaned 
back in her saddle with the reins grasped 
tightly in both gauntleted hands, laughing with 
the pure joy of mastery. 

The first requisite of a good saddle horse is 
not speed, not even ease of motion; it is the 
desire to go forward. Give me a good horse, 
clean-limbed, wide-nostriled, strong-muscled, 
eager, enjoying the road, a firm, smooth path, 
and the wind of early autumn in my face, and 
I cannot help forgetting all my little quarrels 
with fortune and all the little annoyances and 
wearinesses of life. 

It is a treat, for that matter, to ride at any 
time with the girl. She sits her saddle with 
the grace of the born horsewoman, and her 
eyes and thoughts are for all around her — for 
the wide reaches of the rustling, rasping corn- 
fields and for the late daisies that grow beside 
the road. I know, too, that she feels, as I do, 
the subtle intoxication of the season's beauty 
as it creeps into her blood and tingles through 
every nerve with the thrill of life which per- 



An Anttimn Ride. it 

vades the softest air at this time. It is some- 
thing more than a coincidence that the sections 
where the finest saddle horses are raised can also 
lay strong claim to having the fairest women. 
No girl who rides well can be other than pretty 
— while she is riding. 

Two miles down the hard white road and 
our horses were still pressing on fresh and 
eager, but steadily, rhythmically, keeping step 
together, easily swayed by the lightest grasp 
of the finger tips against the reins. A lane, 
narrow, grass-grown, with scattered thickets 
and neglected fence rows on either side, turned 
off to climb a long hill. "Let us go this way," 
I said. So we slowed down to a walk and 
turned off into the beauty of the neglected way. 

Here the sassafras, the black gum, and the 
sumac were putting on the red and brown of 
autumn. Tall ironweeds were opening their 
purple flowers, the wild carrot was blooming 
everywhere, and the goldenrods, hesitating a 
little while before displaying their full splen- 
dor, showed glimpses of yellow against the 



12 Field-Path and Highzvay. 

prevailing green. Artichokes lifted their stars 
of pure gold. The quaint, misnamed "river- 
weed" waved ragged crowns of darker hue, and 
through the tangle of vines and bushes stray 
gleams of blue and yellow or white caught the 
eye. The golden fruit of the bitter-sweet hung 
thickly over the decaying fences, ready to burst 
a little later into a brave show of scarlet. 
Chinquapins gleamed from between their 
opened burrs; and over a tall sassafras a wild 
grapevine had climbed and spread and fruited 
until the whole tree was laden with the rich- 
hued clusters. We drew our horses up beside 
it and gathered the cool, piquant, nectar-fla- 
vored fruit, so delicious in the tang of its wild 
individuality. 

The grapes of our vineyards and gardens 
have in them the flavor of mellowed soils and 
careful tendings and all the long years of 
watchful training. The wild grape is truly 
wild, not only in its growth, but in its very 
nature. It tastes of unchecked breezes and 
untilled soils, of dews that form on starry 



An Autumn Ride. 13 

nights and of sunlight that trickles down 
through layers of swaying leaves. Of it, I am 
sure, the fauns and dryads make their wine, 
if fauns and dryads haunt our American 
thickets and forests. 

A lane climbed over the hill and dipped down 
into a little valley where a small stream ran 
between banks which in a week or so would be 
a wonderful riot of color. Goldenrods and 
artichokes and ironweeds and asters, white 
and purple, and a dozen others, all in blue or 
white or yellow, will hang over that brook and 
mark its course with hues such as ''no painter 
has the colorin' to mock." Yet for all this 
beauty, if the farmers who own those meadows 
had done their duty, they would have cut those 
weeds and bordered the stream with plain red- 
top and timothy. 

We followed a narrow footpath up the creek 
till we came to a little mill — an old-fashioned 
mill which ground corn into the unbolted meal 
from which the "mush" of our childhood days 
was made. Down over the moss-grown wheel 



14 Field-Path and Highzvay. 

the water tumbled, breaking into shining drops 
of crystal and tinkling and splashing like silver 
through all the creaking and rumbling and 
groaning of wheel and pinion. "O! let's go 
in," cried the girl when we had persuaded our 
suspicious horses that the thing was not going 
to eat them for allthe racket it made, and that 
even the spray from the falling water would not 
hurt them. A towheaded boy — just such a boy 
as I used to be when I rode to mill on a big horse 
with my bare legs sticking straight out and a 
sack of grain tied on, because I was not big 
enough to balance it — watched my manner of 
helping the girl to the ground in open-eyed 
wonder and then held our horses while we went 
inside. 

The miller and a farmer waiting for his 
*'turn" greeted the girl with subdued deference 
and myself with offhand familiarity. The 
mill was nothing new to me. So while she 
studied the whitened walls and the powdered 
rafters or watched the corn trickle down out of 
the hopper, and the big burr revolve, and the 



'" An Autumn Ride. 15 

coarse, fragrant meal pour out below, I talked 
crops and politics. 

The farmer told with smiling eyes of how 
poor his corn was going to be, and the miller 
laughingly predicted all sorts of hard times for 
both man and beast. They were not afraid, 
though, for all the damage the drouth had 
done, and wisely preferred laughing at their 
disappointments to moping over them. Coun- 
try folk learn both patient humility and quiet 
contentment from their dealings with the 
weather. Man may control steam and electric- 
ity and harness them to do his bidding; but 
the winds and the clouds, the sun and the rain 
smile or frown as they will, and men may as 
well be content. 

"I don't expect to hitch up at all to bring in 
my corn," said the farmer. 'T'm just goin' 
to take a sack an' carry it in an' be done with 
it." Then we all laughed. I swung the girl 
into the saddle. The white-haired boy opened 
his eyes to their utmost degree of roundness, 
and with a merry wave of hands we rode away. 



1 6 Field-Path and Highzvay, 

Soon we were on the main road again with 
our horses' heads turned toward home. "Sin- 
gle-foot," said the girl. And we went on be- 
tween pastures and cornfields and lands newly 
plowed for wheat, the rhythmic clicking of the 
horses' hoofs making music and the easy gait 
carrying us on swiftly, smoothly, delightfully. 
The single-foot is the poem of gaits for a 
saddle horse. A fragment of verse came into 
my mind and I repeated aloud the tender, 
plaintive lines : 

"No ghost there lingers of the smile that died 
On the sweet, pale lip where his kisses were ; 

Yet still she turns her delicate head aside, 
If she may hear him come with j ingling spur : 

Through the fresh fairness of the spring to ride, 
As in the old days when he rode with her." 

The girl looked out across the fields and 
sighed. There is nothing so deeply interesting 
to hopeful, life-pulsating youth as the tender 
sadness of unavailing love. This touch of 
pathos was needed to tune our hearts to the 
faint minor melody that breathes through ev- 



An Autumn Ride. ly 

ery song of autumn. And as we came in sight 
of home she sighed again. 

"Life and laughter and songs of love, 
Then silence and loneliness ending it all." 

But these moods of gentle sadness endure 
for but a moment and serve only to make life 
and laughter and love the sweeter. For life is 
good, wonderfully good, to even the poorest 
of us all. So it is, that with the friendship of 
a girl who can ride and think and dream, with 
a horse and the freedom of road and lane, with 
the beauty of field and wood and far-off, sky- 
touched hill about me, with September skies 
above me, and with all the gladness and pathos 
of the season for my own, I often forget that 
I am only a very ordinary sort of fellow and 
not one of fortune's favorites. 

2 




The Unchanging Love. 

BEEKEEPER whom I visited 
once went out among his hives, 
where the bees were flying all 
about, walked fearlessly up to 
them, put his finger down at the entrance of a 
hive, and let a bee crawl up on it. Then he 
held it up to show me the bee's good points" ; 
and when it flew away he ''caught" another the 
same way and continued his discourse, calling 
them pet names and praising their virtues. 
Not being afraid of bees, and being doubly 
reassured by the company of so intimate a 
friend of the little honey-makers, I put my 
finger out too, and the bees climbed up it, in- 
vestigated a little, and flew away. Yet half 
the people I know would have begun striking 
and dodging the moment a bee flew near, and 
would have had a swarm buzzing about their 
ears in a very few minutes. 

Bees demand certain things of those who 



20 Field-Path and Highzuay. 

would be their friends : confidence, self-control, 
quietness, gentleness, and due regard of apian 
feelings and whims. One may possess all these 
qualities except the last and utterly fail to win 
the confidence and the love of living things. 
A dog may obey and slavishly follow a man 
who has no feeling for and no appreciation of 
him. But before the man can make the dog 
his friend he must show himself capable of 
understanding that a dog, too, has perceptions 
and prejudices, sentiments and sensibilities — 
yes, that he has vague, strange dreams of things 
not understood, just as men have. 

There was something of truth in the answer 
of the vagabond dog trainer to the college pro- 
fessor. 

The ragged mendicant had his dog doing all 
sorts of tricks in the street. The professor 
came by and stopped to watch. "How is it," 
he asked after a while, ''that you can get your 
dog to do so many things ? I have never been 
able to teach mine a single trick." 

The man with the dog looked at him a 



The Unchanging Love. 21 

moment and said: "Well, it's this way: if you 
don't know no more than the dog, you can't 
learn him nothin'." 

And true it is, that many a man who has 
many kinds of knowledge fails utterly ever to 
come into any intimate relationship with either 
animate or inanimate nature. He sees the vio- 
lets blooming, perhaps, and thinks them beauti- 
ful; but his interest in the violets ends there. 
He walks through the woods in the spring and 
notes that the leaves are putting out; but all 
their wonderful range of color, red and brown 
and yellow and green and gray and rose and 
purple — for all of these are there — he never 
sees. Nor does he catch the varied fragrance 
that floats from opening flower and expanding 
leaf and awakening soil. Such men may write 
learned books about plants and know them thor- 
oughly from a scientific point of view, but they 
will never have that intimate relationship with 
plant life which enables the quiet, rosy-faced 
old maid to keep her garden or her window-bed 
a glory of foliage and blossom. 



22 Field-Path and Highzvay. 

This subtle appreciation and understanding 
of living things, when it reaches out to nature 
generally — to all plants and animals and insects, 
not simply to roses or dogs or bees — makes the 
true seer of nature, the Thoreau or the Bur- 
roughs. 

It is, indeed, a wonderful thing, this real 
understanding of the world about us, which is 
the basis of the truest and deepest nature-love. 
Keats puts the common lack of it into lines of 
haunting beauty: 

"The wind, 
Whose language is to thee a barren noise, 
Though it blows legend-laden through the trees." 

Some who have written glittering verses or 
purple prose in praise of nature's charms have, 
I feel sure, heard only the wind as it blew, 
while barefooted farmer boys and grizzled old 
woodsmen have heard and understood, in part 
at least, the tales it told. For one's love of 
nature is not always to be judged by his words. 
The silent lover may love most truly and woo 
most successfully. 



The Unchanging Love. 23 

Two people I have known who seemed to 
me to possess beyond all others I knew this 
deep, confident, unswerving intimacy with the 
world about them. One of them was a fellow, 
half gentleman and half vagabond, who had a 
strong aversion to work and a perpetual delight 
in hunting and fishing. He Avas called shiftless 
and lazy and all that ; but I think most folks had 
a touch of respect for him, because he loafed 
so openly and unabashed. As another man 
might go to his ofiice or take his team to the 
fields, he shouldered his rifle or took his fishing 
rod and went his way, unashamed, indifferent 
to the gibes of those who toiled. When he 
needed a little money, he might be persuaded 
to do a few days' work ; and he worked faith- 
fully, but with an evident lack of joy in his 
tasks. It was to him an unpleasant matter 
made necessary by circumstances, but a sheer 
loss of time that might have been devoted to 
better things. I have seen him sitting on a fall- 
en log, his long-barreled squirrel rifle in his 
hand, waiting as still almost as a stump for the 



24 Field-Path and Highzvay. 

reappearance of a squirrel that had dodged into 
a hole ; and he seemed, from the placid patience 
with which he waited, to have no care of the 
lapsing hours. I have seen him, too, on myste- 
rious trips afield or through the woods when 
there was nothing to kill. It was in the woods 
and fields that he belonged; and whenever he 
could, there he went. He might have been an- 
other Thoreau if he had had the ability of ex- 
pression, but he was unlettered. I doubt, too, 
if in his calm detachment from what most peo- 
ple regard as the important things of life he 
would have thought it worth while to try to 
make these hurried, busy men understand the 
things that filled his heart. 

So he lived and died, a shiftless, improvident 
fellow whose name was synonymous with in- 
dolence and worthlessness. Yet I have won- 
dered if he was not worthy to be accounted a 
success, since his life evidently brought to him- 
self no sense of failure; and he walked amid 
his fellows with unimpaired self-respect, for 
all his laziness, "a gentleman unafraid." 



The Unchanging Love. 25 

Loving nature with an equal fervor, but in 
a very different fashion, was one whom I first 
knew as a girl of sixteen — a wholesome girl, 
full of life and youth and gladness, who rev- 
eled in growing crops and shadowy woods and 
sunny fields, and made friends of all the ani- 
mals on the farm. She handled the horses 
without fear; the cows would follow her in 
from the fields, while the boys had to drive 
them ; her chickens and turkeys seemed to tlirive 
from her very presence among them, and all 
the dogs on the place were her willing slaves. 
She had a reading nook half hidden in the 
willows down by the brook. Followed by the 
dogs, she would take long rambles over the 
fields and through the patch of near-by wood- 
land; and I have seen her, with flushed face 
and glowing eyes, breaking a path through the 
snow that covered pasture and meadow when 
she had no other reason for doing it than that 
it was good to be out of doors. 

Why a girl like this should be taken to town 
by parents who thought they could get rich by 



26 Field-Path and Highzvay. 

a business of which they knew nothing, and 
who speedily lost the competency they had in 
the attempt, is past understanding; but so it 
was. At twenty-three she was in an office 
supporting a widowed mother and looking out 
in her few breathing spells on blank walls and 
paved streets. This might have been no real 
hardship for many girls, but it was for her. 
It was by accident that I found her, and the 
compressed lips, the pale face, the wistful eyes 
prevented my knowing her at first. Because 
I was of the country and had shared in the 
pleasures and to a certain extent the hopes of 
her girlhood days, she told me all — all the 
dreams and the longings and the weariness of 
this cramped and alien life with which she 
dared not burden her mother. I, too, was of 
the country and would understand. Sick at 
heart that I could not help her, I went my way ; 
and though the weary, wistful face came often 
before me, I did not see her again for two 
years. 

Then I saw her with startled pain. There 



The Unchanging Love. 27 

was hardness in her hps, hints of unfathomable 
bitterness in her eyes. She did not turn to me 
with trustful friendship this time ; she was half 
defiant, half fearful. The reckless laugh cut 
me deeper than the fitful sighs she could not 
stifle. I asked no questions, because I feared 
to learn the truth. 

"Nell," said I, "y^^^ ^''^^^ "° °"^ ^^^^^ "°^^ ' 
you are going back to the country." 

Gladness flamed into her eyes for a minute 
and then faded into the ashes of a hopeless 

grief. 

"I can't," she said. "I've nowhere to go, 

nothing to do." 

"Do you remember the Widow Bennett?" I 
asked. She was a simple, loving soul with a 
fund of nature-wisdom who lived in a little 
cottage on the edge of the village where Nell 
and I had often gone to buy groceries or to get 

the mail. 

"She wouldn't have me." But there was 

hope in her voice. 

"We'll try," I said. "Can you be ready by 
Sunday?" 



28 Field-Path and Highzvay, 

We went. The unassuming old saint in the 
blue calico dress heard our story and hesitated 
for a minute. Then she said: "Yes, Nell; I 
guess you're a pretty good farm hand, and I'm 
sure it'll be better for you here." She put her 
arm about the girl, who went down on her 
knees in an outburst of tears. 

I felt the tears smarting my eyes too as I 
went away, but I was glad. The country had 
her own again ; and there is wonderful healing 
for tired mind and sickened spirit, as well as 
for overworked muscles and jaded nerves, in 
the companionship of the pastures and the gar- 
den. 




''Not Unavailing^ 

IHE most cheerless of all days in 
this latitude are the days of winter 
rain — cold, gray, with fitful winds 
and slow, munnuring, "shivery" 
showers. A muddy earth, damp, raw air, and 
skies hidden ever so deeply by wind-driven 
masses of shadowy mist— surely there is no 
other time when a good fire and a good book 
are so comforting. 

On such a day I sat with my book dangling 
idly in my hand and looking at the fire. Fire- 
o-azing- is one of the most cheerful recreations 
for people of all ages and conditions. Little 
children can see wonderful things in a blaze or 
a bed of coals, and I am sure that we older folks 
could too if we would only take the time to look 
for them. I saw none of those wonderful 
things this day, however, for I was thinking of 
other fires I had known in other days — big, 
cheerful wood fires that crackled and blazed 



30 Field-Path and Highzvay. 

and threw flickering shadows over the walls 
and ceilings. Such fires are getting sadly un- 
common. Coal is winning its way far into the 
country districts, even in the wooded sections. 
We did not appreciate the forests until we had 
almost destroyed them, and the worst of it is 
that even to-day the forces of destruction are 
more potent than are those of renewal and 
conservation. A coal fire in an open grate is 
by no means to be despised. Ik Marvel has 
celebrated its beauties in a book that keeps its 
youth and freshness despite its abounding 
faults. I have no desire to imitate him. I 
have known better fires — fires in great stone 
fireplaces in humble hill country cabins where 
there were big four-foot logs ablaze. Cheerful, 
indeed, those fires ; but O how wasteful ! 

It is a long reach from the Tennessee hills 
to the arid plains and rugged mountains of Old 
Spain; but I had only to turn to my book to 
make the change, for the neglected volume in 
my hand was ''Don Quixote." 

There are great books and good books, and 



''Not Unavailing." 31 

the two terms are by no means synonymous. 
So there are interesting books and comfortable 
books, and they are not ahvays the same. I 
remember my first dip into Dante. For hours 
I hung over the ^'Inferno" with eager ardor; 
and for two or three days the shadow of that 
terrific vision lay on my mind like a great stu- 
pefying cloud. There are books that inspire 
me to do things — to dream, to write, to work — 
but the "Divine Comedy," "Paradise Lost," 
and "Macbeth" are not in that class. They 
fill me instead with a sort of helpless awe and 
wonder. Great books they are, with the great- 
ness of the unmeasured elemental forces, and 
perennially fascinating. Yet who would dare 
call them comfortable books, or go to them for 
recreation in a lazy hour ? 

"Don Quixote" is at once a great book and 
a comfortable one. The wise and the simple 
may both find interest and profit in it, food for 
studious reflection or amusement for hours of 
idle leisure. When I first read it as a mere 
child (and how much better it is for a child 



32 Field-Path and Highway. 

to read ''Don Quixote" than to be brought up 
on most of the so-called juvenile literature of 
the present day!) I found in it only a laugh- 
able account of a crazy old man and his foolish 
servant. I only wondered what ridiculous 
thing would happen next ; and if I felt any pity 
for them, it passed away before the overpow- 
ering realization of their absurdity. 

The humor of the book does not diminish or 
stale, but as one grows older there comes to 
him a new conception of the deeper meaning of 
it. For, as Prof. George E. Woodberry has 
said, "Don Quixote" is, after all, a sad book. 
This poor old crazy knight, fighting wind- 
mills and doing penance, has more good qual- 
ities than most of us will ever possess. He is 
twice as knightly as Lancelot. All that Sidney 
had he has, except sanity. Nobler ambitions 
and purer purposes nowhere exist. Yet they 
make of him a laughingstock for the ages. 
Never was there such a comedy, and yet it is a 
tragedy as deep and of the same kind as "Ham- 
let" or "Lear." Are we not all Don Quixotes, 



''Not Unavailing." 33 

ridiculous to every one but ourselves, fit sub- 
jects for laughter or for tears ? What do all of 
our most self -satisfying exertions amount to in 
the end? How foolishly futile may all our 
most earnest strivings for better things yet be! 

Reaching this point in my reflections, I turned 
from the now smoldering fire and looked out- 
side, where a listless shower was stirred now 
and then by a keen, ill-tempered gust of wind, 
which passed away with a long, peevish wail. 
I put on a raincoat, drew my hat down over 
my face, and splashed out into a little patch of 
woods just across the way. 

This wood is only a little oasis of trees — • 
oak, chestnut, and pine— on a gravelly hillside, 
surrounded by fields and streets and houses. 
The undergrowth is almost crushed out by the 
ever-passing feet from the town. The thin 
coating of fallen leaves, drifted into little 
heaps here and there, was water-logged. Tiny 
streams crept slowly down the wet trunks. 
Under the pines the brown carpet was soft and 
oozy. In places moss covered the rocky slope, 

3 



34 Field-Path and Highway. 

and it was fresh and green between the bright, 
clean-washed pebbles. All else was dull and 
colorless. The force of the wind was broken, 
although it stirred the branches overhead. 
There was an incessant, soft, sibilant murmur 
that made it all seem strangely lonely, as if I 
were in the heart of a sure-enough forest in- 
stead of within easy call of half a dozen houses. 
In a little patch of briers and dead grasses a 
covey of quail ran about, frightened, it seemed, 
but unwilling to fly. A slender pine had lost its 
grip in the unceasing struggle for existence, 
and had been crowded to death by its sturdier 
companions. I could almost pull it over. Its 
efforts, too, had been in vain. 

I went back to the edge of the wood, and a 
sharper gust drove the cold rain into my face. 
Instinctively I threw back my head and drew 
a deeper breath. Then I made a rush against 
the wind and rain and tumbled into the porch 
flushed and laughing. 

Inside I took up my book again and read to 
two or three children the notable adventure of 



''Not Unavailing." 35 

the peerless knight with the lethargic lions. 
They seemed to enjoy it even if they did not 
understand it. Yet why should that matter? 
I am by no means sure that I understood it 
myself. Enjoyment does not depend altogether 
on understanding. At any rate, with a smile I 
laid the book away. The luckless hero has 
brought cheer to unnumbered thousands, and 
will continue to do so through all the ages. 
Who, then, will say that Don Quixote de la 
Mancha fought in vain ? 




When the Circus Came to Town. 

WAS wakened in the cool gray 
dawn by the rattle of wagons and 
the clatter of hoofs on the hard 
road. People were already stream- 
ing toward town, some of them having come 
for miles. As the sun rose, their numbers in- 
creased and their pace accelerated. All through 
the early part of the glorious October day they 
went on, a motley multitude, singly and in 
groups, in wagons and carriages, on horseback 
and on foot— all eager to get away from the 
everyday beauties of cloudless skies and purple 
horizons, of russet fields, of woods yellow and 
scarlet and brown, and to reach the more un- 
usual charms of tinsel trappings and shrill- 
toned music. 

I went with the latest of them and soon lost 
myself in the changing, jostling crowd which 
hurried here and loitered there, at one place 
breaking into little groups, at another thicken- 



38 Field-Path and Highway. 

ing into an impenetrable mass. There were 
people of all kinds, fashions of all dates, and 
colors of every conceivable shade. The people 
of the town looked with smiling pity on the 
folks from " 'way back in the hills," who went 
their way in peaceful ignorance of their urban 
critics. The near-by farmers and their wives 
stood in groups at the street corners shaking 
hands and laughing and talking. The children 
surged restlessly in an undercurrent about the 
more sturdy forms of their elders. Every- 
where was crowding, pushing, and good- 
natured chaffing. 

At length the parade came by. Between two 
solid lines of gaping humanity it passed with 
all its sham glory, its bizarre costumings, its 
tarnished finery. The great lumbering car- 
riages, the screeching calliope, the blaring, 
thundering bands, the grotesque clowns — all 
received their share of admiration. Deeper 
interest, however, centered in the animals, from 
the familiar horses to the unknown yak. I 
knew that more than one boy, as he saw the 



When the Circus Came to Town. 39 

great elephants pass with majestic tread, caught 
wonderful glimpses of Indian jungles, strange 
and shadowy and unreal; or, as he looked at 
the polar bear in his pool, tingled with a longing 
for the great white solitudes of the North and 
recalled all he had read of the heroes of that 
desolate clime. And who of us can see un- 
moved the lords of the tropical forests, with all 
their elemental fierceness still burning in their 
eyes, crouch and cower before the man who has 
tamed them ? 

So the procession passed while all stared and 
wondered and stood on tiptoe. Rich and poor, 
white and black, aristocrat and outcast stood 
side by side with one common interest until it 
had gone. 

Later came the performance; and who can 
describe the glory of it all? Wonderful ani- 
mals, daring deeds, impossible feats, the whole 
enthralling atmosphere of the ring — these may 
not have thrilled those poor creatures who were 
indifferent, because they had seen many such 
things ; but the boys and girls and all who had 



40 Field-Path and Highway, 

kept the faith and simphcity of childhood knew 
and felt their magic spell. It is the person who 
is not afraid to yield himself to the sensations 
of the hour who can succeed in having a good 
time; others only try. The hill folk, simple, 
uncultured, sometimes uncouth, find an almost 
excessive joy in escaping for a day from the 
strong, orderly dominion of nature into the 
freedom of the noisy, crowded, glittering town. 
The darkies too, with their barbaric delight in 
show and sound, in pomp and pretense, and 
their childlike love for the new and the mar- 
velous, derive from the circus an intense hap- 
piness. How inferior is the pleasure it gives to 
the stylishly dressed young lady who surveys 
the crowd with disdainful eyes and comments 
on "the queer old creature with the red-and- 
yellow shawl, the green waist, and the purple 
plumes !" 

For all, however, "show day" is a day of 
unreality, of detachment from the common 
round of life. That is why the fakers can that 
day sell all sorts of things that nobody needs. 



When the Circus Came to Town. 41 

and why so many are ready to spend their last 
dollar to see the circus, or to buy presents for 
wife or babies, or candy and lemonade for 
"the girls" and "the rest of the fellers." To- 
morrow will come the old familiar duties and 
cares. To-day we will forget it all and live 
only for to-day. We will make the most of 
this strange, new, crowded, feverish wofld 
while it is passing, for there will be many days 
in which to work and think and live our wonted 
lives. Of course the hard-headed business men 
of the town and the prudent, conservative farm- 
ers do not yield themselves to this feeling; 
but the young and the thoughtless, the improv- 
ident and the simple embrace it with abandon. 

Next winter many a hard-earned dollar that 
has been spent for an hour of strange sights or 
for worthless baubles will be needed to buy the 
necessaries of life. Is it wasted then? I am 
not so sure. It is a great thing to have pleasant 
memories and beautiful dreams, even if the 
memories are only of a day of thoughtless 
pleasure and the dreams are inspired by the 
tawdry glitter and dazzle of a circus. 



4^ Field-Path and Highway. 

I went through the day as did my friends. 
My object was to have a good time. Accident- 
ally I came upon a boy and a girl. They were 
sitting on a goods box in the rear of a store and 
had evidently forgotten all about the circus and 
the crowd. He was holding her hand, and both 
were looking over the housetops at the placid 
sky. Occasionally, however, they glanced at 
each other, and then both smiled frankly and 
happily. They were dressed simply, in very 
evident country style, and the few words I 
heard them speak were in undeniable defiance 
of the first rules of grammar. There was a 
little bag of something — candy, I supposed — 
sitting between them, and as she lifted her hand 
to push back the hair which the breeze was 
blowing into her eyes and mouth she knocked it 
over. Neither noticed it, and her hand fell 
back into his. It was evident that both were 
poor. He was not handsome, and she was not 
pretty ; but what did these things matter ? They 
were in love. 

As quickly and quietly as possible I with- 



When the Circus Came to Town. 43 

drew, though they would have heeded me no 
more than they did the bustle and noise of the 
crowd. They will remember that day, not for 
its sights and sounds, but because it was a day 
of the heart. For under all the panoramic 
changes of outward circumstance the great real- 
ities of life steadfastly endure. 




JI Teller of Tales. 

^ HAVE had the pleasure of know- 
ing a few great men and the honor 
of knowing a great many men who 
were not great. Among them all 
there was none more worthy of honor than one 
of the plainest and most unassuming of the 
friends of my boyhood. Because I knew him 
I am sure that my whole life has been bright- 
er, and I have had through all the years a 
fuller and truer appreciation of the sweetness 
of life — the laughter and the smiles that lurk in 
the commonest tasks of everyday existence. 

He was not great either by birth or achieve- 
ment. A simple carpenter, he loved his work 
and evidently spent little time in futile dream- 
ing. Neither would his features, if they had 
been preserved in marble or bronze, have 
charmed the world by their beauty or majesty. 
Not more than five feet two in height, with the 
hands of the toiler, bald head and snowy 



46 Field-Path and Highway. 

beard, kindly wrinkled face and twinkling eyes 
— such is the picture memory paints of my hero. 
Plain, with no great talents, without wealth 
or fame or great influence; but I never heard 
any one accuse him of wrongdoing or speak 
unkindly of him. Temper he had and stern 
determination, but I think few people suspected 
it. Strictly honest, doing good to all — these 
are noble traits, but I have known others who 
shared them. But never have I known any one 
so saturated with good humor, so redolent of 
good cheer, so fond of telling a good story, and 
with so many good stories to tell. A chance re- 
mark, a passing neighbor, a piece of work, a 
change in the weather — all these reminded him 
of more stories. A dozen times a day some- 
thing would happen to call forth the familiar 
"That reminds me of" — Then as the laugh 
went round he would go back to his saw or 
chisel, ready to be reminded of something else. 
All his stories were worth while. I never saw 
a man bored by one of them ; and higher praise 
than this, within the bounds of truth, would be 



A Teller of Tales. 47 

hard to find. They were clean, too ; not raked 
from cesspool and gutter, but fresh from field 
and market place and fireside. And if the story 
made you laugh at your neighbor, it was a 
laugh in which he could join. 

Folks wondered where he got them all, for 
the supply seemed inexhaustible. Whatever he 
may have forgotten, he must have remembered 
every good story he ever heard. His delight at 
hearing a new one was equaled only by his joy 
in telling it, and it always left him better for 
its sojourn with him. None of them will ever 
be as fresh or as pertinent when put into dead 
letters as when they fell in living words from 
his lips. They were mostly little anecdotes of 
common life which often one cannot recall 
when he wishes, but which come up when least 
expected to make one laugh all to himself. 

A favorite was the tale of the young store- 
keeper in the land of the Malungeons, who had 
the misfortune to lose an eye. He went across 
the hills and procured a glass one. After he 
had come back to his old place, an old lady came 



48 Field-Path and Highway. 

into the store one day to wonder at this mar- 
velous thing. The storekeeper answered her 
questions patiently until she wound up by ask- 
ing: ''And, Mr. Blank, kin ye see as well out 
of thet eye as out of the other'n?" 

It might have been at the same store that one 
of those good-natured, worthless fellows whose 
main purpose in life is to avoid labor, owed a 
bill which had been running for some years. 
In an unguarded moment he sold the store- 
keeper some hogs, and that thrifty man pro- 
ceeded to collect his account when he paid for 
them. The old citizen stood it with the best 
grace he could muster and then walked out to 
where a crowd of his cronies were standing. 
"Well, boys," he announced, 'T've paid Bill 
Green up. I don't owe him anything now but 
good will, and mighty darned little of that." 

Over in the same region lived a pair oi law- 
yers of rather indifferent reputation. They 
were defending a pretty tough character in a 
case that looked hopeless. During the trial, as 
was often done, they took him into a little side 



A Teller of Tales. 49 

room for consultation. The junior member 
of the firm soon returned, but the older man 
stayed out a long time. Suddenly he came 
running in, exclaiming that the fellow had 
jumped out of the window and ''skedaddled." 
There was, of course, great excitement, and the 
placid innocency of the lawyers' faces excited 
the judge's suspicion. Turning to them in an- 
ger, he exclaimed : 'Tf I knew that either of 
you had anything to do with this, you should 
be disbarred from the courts of this State for- 
ever." The older lawyer arose and bowed 
politely. "If it please your honor, you shall 
never know it." Later it was learned that they 
had turned the trick, just as the judge suspected. 
Of more practical application was the account 
of the boy who was apprenticed to a carpenter. 
When he came home at the end of his first week, 
his father wanted to know what he had learned. 
"I've learned how to make a wedge just an 
inch long." "Huh! I can do that," retorted 
the old man. "Let's see you." The father 
sawed off a block an inch in length and went 

4 



50 Field-Path and Highway. 

to work with his hatchet. About the third lick 
he cut a chunk off his thumb and jumped up in 
a rage. "Here ! you get down here and make 
one," he ordered. The boy picked up a long 
stick, made his wedge, and then sawed it off 
an inch long. ''Well, you have learned some- 
thing," admitted the man. 

There was a moral, too, in the tale of the 
man who fed his slaves very scantily and 
watched them while they were at work. One 
day two of them were sawing wood with true 
darky slowness when one caught a glimpse of 
the master peering through the bushes. ''Sam," 
he demanded, "what's dis saw sayin' ?" Sam 
listened to the slow strokes and shook his head. 
"It says, 'D-r-y b-r-e-a-d, d-r-y b-r-e-a-d.' " 
The owner slipped off home, had a big dinner 
cooked, and that afternoon listened again. The 
saw was going at a lively pace. The first darky 
asked once more : "What's dis saw sayin' now, 
Sam ?" Sam gave an extra sweep to his stroke 
as he answered : "It says, 'Bacon an' beans, sop 
an' puddin' ; bacon an' beans, sop an' puddin'.' " 



A Teller of Tales. 51 

Wholly without uplift or inspiration was the 
account of the hill farmer's band of roving 
sheep which a neighbor, angered by a raid upon 
his crops, put up and held for ransom. Receiv- 
ing word of what had happened, the shepherd 
went to town and sought for inspiration. He 
received it, too, for that evening he came back 
riding rather unsteadily, and called his angry 
neighbor to the gate. "Bill," he asked in tones 
of maudlin penitence, "don't you love me?" 
The neighbor evaded the question, but he per- 
sisted : "So you don't love me. Bill?" "Yes," 
said the neighbor, tiring of his questions and 
presence, "I love yoii; go on home." "So you 
love me, Bill ?" "Yes," with much impatience. 
"Then why don't you feed my sheep?" The 
next morning the released sheep went wander- 
ing homeward. 

Nor was there much of sanctity in the story 
of a big revival during which one of the breth- 
ren became very much excited and very fervent 
in prayer. "O Lord," he shouted, "send down a 
blessing as big as Brother Jackson's foot, so 



52 Field-Path and Highway. 

that this house may not be able to contain it." 
And over in the corner another brother piped 
in a shrill voice: "The Lord grant it — ah!" 

This ''ah" at the end of a sentence, or rath- 
er of a respiration, familiar to all v^ho have 
heard Dunker or "Hardshell" Baptist preachers, 
added a unique flavor to more than one yarn. 
For example, that of the inspired minister in 
some far-away mountain cove who, in speaking 
with prophetic vision of the days to come, rose 
to this height of eloquence: "And, my breth- 
ering — ah — the day will come — ah — when the 
sound of the gritter — ah — and the tinkling of 
the sang hoe — ah — shall be heard in these hills 
and hollers no more, no more forever — ^ah." 

"No more forever" will the cheery face and 
the hearty laugh of the old carpenter be seen or 
heard, but so long as one who knew him lives 
he will be remembered. Better still, he will al- 
ways be remembered with a smile. Possibly, 
too, with a sigh ; for though he lived out man's 
allotted time, it seemed strange and sad that 
gne so radiant of life and joy should die. 



A Teller of Tales. 53 

Yet if there is a touch of sadness in our 
memory of him, there is nothing of bitterness. 
There could be none in the memory of a man 
who gathered and reflected all of life's sun- 
shine, and who went through the world gladly, 
hopefully, dispensing laughter on every side, 
and yet 

"Through all this tract of years 
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life." 




77?^ Master's Discipline. 

OR twenty years Edmund Garnett 
had ruled over the school at the old 
academy. Then he decided that he 
needed rest, and a new teacher was 
secured. This new hand naturally failed to 
give satisfaction, and there was a general de- 
mand for the old master to take his accustomed 
place. He was glad to do it, too, for his year's 
rest had told on him more than had any three 
years of work. 

On the first morning of the school we were 
all early in our places waiting for his arrival. 
Larry King, the oldest student, had told us 
what to do, and we were ready. As soon as 
the familiar figure entered the door we began a 
great stamping of feet and clapping of hands 
by way of welcome. He gave a quick glance 
over the room, brought his old hickory pointer 
down across the table which served him for a 
desk, and said sharply : "Enough of that, now !" 
In an instant we were all sitting silent and 



56 Field-Path and Highway. 

rigid. Yet for all his terrible frown I do not 
think he was much displeased. He knew there 
was no mockery in our welcome, even if he 
could not tolerate such a breach of discipline. 

Discipline was Mr. Garnett's strong point, 
and his methods and rules were all his own. 
We had many privileges, but there were a few 
things we must not do. First-year pupils were 
exempt from all but the mildest punishments; 
but for all others, to throw across the room, to 
cheat at lessons or at play, to strike or tease a 
smaller child, or willfully to disobey any com- 
mand was a capital offense, and the punishment 
was certain and unvarying. The culprit, if a 
girl, big or little, was sent home for a day ; but 
when a boy was guilty the teacher would pick 
up that same stout pointer, beckon with it to the 
offender, and say in a voice hard and tense: 
"Come up here, sir!" Then the room would 
be vibrant with the rhythmic swish and thud of 
a four-foot switch. The bigger the boy, the 
more he got; but aside from this, no partiality 
was shown. 



The Master's Discipline. S7 

Mr. Garnett had a sharp voice, too, and could 
bring that deadly pointer down on the table with 
a *'Well, now !" that was guaranteed to frighten 
any six- or seven-year-old half out of his wits. 
Yet with these same noisy, restless tots he was 
the most patient of men. He never tired of 
explaining the mysteries of elementary mathe- 
matics or of rubbing in the alphabetic formulae. 
The little ones may have feared him during 
school hours, but when he laid aside his hickory 
scepter there was always a clamorous insistence 
for him' to "come and play." He often went; 
and once, when a little girl was accidentally 
knocked over and hurt, he picked her up and 
carried her home, nearly a mile, while we stood 
about and waited for his return. 

There was, for a while, little or no difference 
in that last year from all the years that had 
gone before. True, he lingered more fondly 
over the torturous and knotty problems he loved, 
and told with more thrilling emphasis those old 
history stories of courage and devotion which 
under his magic touch had always worn for us 



58 Field-Path and Highway. 

the garments of romance and poetry. True, 
his hair was whiter and his eyes dimmer than 
they had been; but his voice was as sharp, his 
discipHne as exacting, and his sHm, wiry figure 
as active as ever. 

Suddenly with a stinging shock the change 
came. Bob Harris was caught at his old trick 
of flipping gravel across at the girls. The 
teacher stepped to his desk, picked up his point- 
er, and said in the old, familiar way: "Bob, 
come up here, sir." Bob came and stood before 
him. He raised the pointer once, twice, and 
lowered it each time. Standing grim and si- 
lent, he looked at the long-legged, muscular 
chap of fourteen whom he had seen grow up 
from a chubby, red-faced youngster of six, 
and into whose stubborn, wrong-set head he 
had drilled and coaxed and frailed all of the 
little knowledge it held. Then, as Bob looked 
around, he said brokenly : "I am not able to do 
it. I shall never whip you again, Bob. Go back 
to your seat and behave yourself." And Bob, 
who had taken many whippings and grinned 



The Master's Discipline. 59 

complacently under the hardest of them, went 
to his seat, put his head down on his anns, and 
cried like a baby. That was on Tuesday. All 
the rest of the week the teacher was very gentle, 
and we were all so good that it was positively 
painful. The next Monday morning Larry 
King took charge of the school. 

The old master did not get sick. He 
only sat around by some friendly fireside and 
dozed or told tales of Roman or American his- 
tory while the flame of life burned lower and 
lower. He had no home. Most of the time he 
stayed with his crony, Squire King, although he 
occasionally visited about in his old fashion. 
It never, I think, entered his mind that he could 
be unwelcome anywhere; and if any of his 
people had felt that it would be a burden to 
care for him a whole year, I am sure they 
would have been ashamed to say so. 

Singly or in little groups all of us visited 
him occasionally, and he greeted us as equals, 
not as pupils. I do not know whether any one 
told him of our growing realization of what 



6o Field-Path and Highway. 

we all owed him, but we tried in every other 
way to make him feel it. And none of us tried 
harder than did Bob Harris. 

Poor old Bob! He was the old man's faith- 
ful attendant until that sunny June day when 
we stood around the open grave in the quiet old 
churchyard. Since then he has won his way 
and made his mark, has become the great man 
among all of us who left the peaceful neighbor- 
hood of the old schoolhouse to go out into the 
great world. But when I talked with him a 
few days ago the tears came into his eyes 
as he spoke of the old master who had la- 
bored so long and patiently with him, and of 
that last thrashing which he did not get. 




For Love of Margery. 

T was the middle of April, and the 
wild crab tree was in full bloom. 
Standing in a little thicket of plum 
bushes in the midst of the rolling, 
rich-green pasture on which the cattle had not 
yet been turned, it gripped the outcropping 
limestone with knotty roots and lifted its won- 
derful crown of pink above the white blossoms 
of its humbler neighbors. In its branches the 
bees came and went with untiring murmur of 
delight. The shadowed space beneath was a 
veritable temple of fragrance, warm, rich, 
sensuous. The sunlight patterned a soft mo- 
saic on bare brown earth and gray lichened 
stone. 

The girl sitting there was, however, only 
vaguely conscious of all this; and while the boy 
beside her now and then lifted his head and 
drew in a deeper breath, his thoughts too were 
plainly of other things. To both of them, 



62 Field-Path and Highway. 

springtime and summertime, the fertile stretch- 
es of pasture and meadow and fresh-harrowed 
cornfields, the vivid green of the young wheat 
and the varied hues of the half -grown leaves in 
the woodlands, even the beauty and sweetness 
of their own blossom-bo wered retreat, were 
matters of little concern. 

Lawrence had been unfolding his plans, and 
to them Lena had been forced to listen with 
thoughts of admiration and words of approval. 
But the more he talked, the more keenly she 
felt that, whether or not he so willed it, he 
was planning a life with which she would have 
less and less connection; that if he did the 
things he had set his heart upon doing, he must 
be lost to her. 

Sweethearts they had been from childhood. 
They had played together, gone to school to- 
gether, and felt themselves now pledged to each 
other even without formal words of betrothal. 
Both had known more of privation and strug- 
gle than came to most of the young folks of 
their neighborhood. Lena's mother was a 



For Love of Margery. 63 

widow who had made her Hving by helping the 
wives of the prosperous farmers of the com- 
munity with their household tasks; and circum- 
stances had forced the girl, young as she was, 
to bend her shoulders to the yoke of labor. 
Lawrence, equally poor, had struggled well 
against the odds of fortune, and was now at 
twenty a leader in some respects among the 
sturdy boys who had enjoyed far greater op- 
portunities. There was decision in his chin and 
confidence in his eyes; and when he flung up 
his head and announced that he was going to 
college and that he had plans even beyond that, 
the eirl at his side had no doubt that he would 
do it. She knew enough of life, too, to know 
that a man of the kind he meant to be would 
seek other companionship than hers. Nor had 
she failed to note lately a less demonstrative 
affection, an air of meditative preoccupation, 
and eyes that turned in silent admiration too 
often to another face. Lena had not given up 
her lover; but she felt that he was surely slip- 
ping away from her, that the childhood love 



64 Field-Path and Highway. 

which had deepened in her heart as the years 
passed by was gradually ebbing away from his. 

It was cruel, too; for Lawrence was all she 
had, and Margery — Margery had everything! 
Wealth, beauty, a rich dower of culture, above 
all a sweet simplicity of nature and a purity of 
soul which made her loved of all who knew her. 
Lena herself loved Margery ; for when the dark 
days had come the petted darling of fortune 
had gone into the little cabin home tenderly and 
helpfully as a sister might have done and, de- 
spite the differences in their lives and their for- 
tunes, had become the best of all of Lena's girl 
friends. 

None could know how much the love of 
Margery had helped the proud, hot-tempered 
little girl to bear the slights and the unspoken 
scorn of other more fortunate maidens, how 
much comfort she had had from the unaffected, 
unselfish friendship of one who was the ac- 
knowledged leader among all the girls she 
knew. Until Margery had shown her, she had 
not known how beautiful she might be. It was 



For Love of Margery. 65 

Margery who taught her how to dress her hair 
in the way Lawrence Hked best, Margery who 
helped her to make her simple frocks so fit and 
tasteful, Margery who had spurred her to 
carry on her early neglected education. Yet 
all this had been no hardship to Margery. Lena 
could not feel that she should be asked to pay 
for it with all her hopes of the future. 

But she could not blame Margery, and she 
never dreamed of blaming her sweetheart. To 
her he had long been so nearly perfect that his 
actions went unquestioned; and when she felt 
that he was going away from her, she blamed 
herself, not him. 

So she praised his high ideals and encour- 
aged his ambitions, while her heart cried out: 
"O ! why not a little home here for you and me, 
and for us the old familiar life with only love 
to make its burdens easier?" 

Perhaps the boy divined something of this, 

for a shadow came across his face and his eyes 

grew troubled. He laid his hand on hers. "I 

wish you could go too, Lena. Maybe I can find 

5 



66 Field-Path and Highway. 

some way to make it easier for you. If you 
could only have a year at school and get to rest 
a little!" 

"You know I can't leave mother," she said. 

"No," he agreed, and both were silent. 

Directly she arose. "I must go home." 

"I'll go with you." 

"No, not this time, Lawrence. I'll see you 
at church to-morrow." 

He was mystified and half piqued by her re- 
fusal. He did not guess that she only wanted 
to cry. 

Scarcely had she passed from sight when he 
caught a glimpse of a little green jacket in the 
valley road. In an instant he was on his feet 
watching with parted lips, for Margery was 
riding there. Had Lena seen him then, her 
tears might have fallen even more profusely. 
Yet for love of Margery, Lena, reaching home 
with reddened eyes and troubled spirit and 
finding her friend there, greeted her with more 
than usual kindness. 

The summer grew old, and all the neighbor- 



For Love of Margery. 67 

hood gossips said that it was for love of Mar- 
gery that Lawrence toiled so fiercely and stud- 
ied so earnestly. When he left in the fall, these 
wise ones said she had smiled on his going. 
Lena mattered little to them. They could not 
know the loneliness of that wounded heart, 
torn between gratitude and a fierce primal sense 
of wrong, suffering- alone with no friend to 
confide in, and with a confiding friend whose 
gentlest hint of joy was as the thrust of a knife. 
Still Lena heard without one word which might 
have brought doubt or trouble, repressing brave- 
ly her constant desire to cry aloud: ''You ha^-e 
everything, and he was all I had ; yet you take 
him away from me and still pretend to be my 
friend." 

Two years had passed, and again a youth 
and a maiden sat under the blossoming crab 
tree. Lena had seen them going that way, and 
somehow she felt that the end had come— the 
end, not of life, but of dreams, a far sadder 
thing. From the window of the little cabin 
she saw them leaving, hand in hand, just as 



68 Field-Path and Highway. 

the sun touched the hills in the west and threw 
over the delicate beauty of the blossoming tree 
a shimmering mesh of translucent gold. She 
gripped her hands and, looking out across the 
shadow-barred landscape, saw the long, dull 
years that waited her, the ceaseless round of 
toil, the slow relapse into the slipshod manners 
and vacant thoughts of drudgery's daughters, 
the ever-recurring sense of wrong and pain at 
each sight of the happiness in which she had 
once fancied she should share. She cried aloud 
and buried her face in her arms, sobbing with- 
out restraint. Then as the faint voice of her 
mother came to her in frightened inquiry, she 
dried her eyes and softly murmured false ex- 
cuses while she soothed the troubled invalid 
back into calmness. This, it seemed, was the 
one good thing life now held for her. 

All the neighborhood gossips said that for 
love of Margery Lawrence had toiled and 
wrought and made himself a man — he who 
had been the very synonym for poverty and 
lowliness of birth. They did not know that for 



For Love of Margery. 69 

love of Margery a little, loving, rebellious girl 
had done a far finer and an incomparably hard- 
er thing — that Lena had been able to greet 
Margery with smiling lips, to seek to add to 
her already overflowing happiness, and even 
partly to forgive. 

For all that he had done, moreover, the man 
had his abundant reward; but to the lonely 
woman there could be no recompense. Even 
neighborhood gossips do not see all that is 
taking place before their eyes, nor has any rev- 
elation yet answered for us the simplest riddle 
of the humblest life. 



Dags of Happiness. 



% 



Y happiest day? It is hard to say, 
for into each day both joy and 
sorrow enter. Looking backward 
through the years, it is often hard 
to decide whether a particular day holds more 
of happiness or of sadness. Still there are a 
few days which I remember as preeminently 
days of gladness. 

I was certainly happy that August afternoon 
when my friend and I lay in the shade of the 
big elm tree in the meadow and talked of our 
plans and hopes for the future. We both had 
high aspirations and great ambitions. And as 
we lay there and watched the white clouds 
drift across the sky and the black shadows si- 
lently lengthen as the slow hours went by, they 
seemed easy of attainment. He was to be rich 
and powerful; I was to delve deeply into rare 
old volumes of antiquated lore and forgotten 
wisdom and from them to draw the inspira- 



72 Field-Path and Highway. 

tion that should make me wise and famous. 
Knowledge and wealth, honor and power 
seemed to us then all that were to be desired; 
and we had no doubt that they would one day 
be ours. We did not dream that we were as 
near them then as we should ever be, or that, 
should we attain them, they would bring no joy 
equal to that of our fond and vain anticipation. 
Soon we had to take our places in the prosaic, 
workaday world and turn our hands and our 
thoughts to life's common tasks. Still it was 
not until long years had come and gone that 
our bright dreams faded and our thoughts fit- 
ted themselves to the real world about us. 

Another happy day was that on which a let- 
ter came to me bringing the first note of ac- 
ceptance for one of my verses. The kind 
words of the editor brought a deep, quiet joy 
to my heart and seemed to foretell the realiza- 
tion of another radiant dream. It seemed to 
me then that the world must see my verses and 
note them and feel their thrill as I had felt it. 
Perhaps it will—for that was several years ago, 



Days of Happiness. 73 

and they are yet unpublished — but I doubt it. 
Others equally good have been published and 
no one apparently has heeded them, while 
some of those which seemed to my partial mind 
to hold most of sweetness and beauty are still 
with me after many rejections. 

Joy clings, too, about the memory of that 
night when some half dozen of us stood in a 
little room, silent but with smiling faces and 
buoyant hearts. For months we had labored — 
all of us ardently ; all of us, as I believe, unself- 
ishly — for a cause which had seemed to us wor- 
thy of such devotion. Now it had triumphed ; 
and each of us, I doubt not, felt that he had 
done something tangible to make the world 
happier and better. We fancied that by our 
help it had taken an unmistakable step toward 
the better day, but now we know that it felt 
our efforts only "as the sea's self would heed a 
pebble cast." I still think that we did well; 
but what seemed so much then is now very 

little. 

Happiest of all days, perhaps— and yet most 



;^4 Field-Path and Highway. 

deeply sorrowful — was one in mid-autumn, 
when the woods were ablaze with color and the 
distant hills blended into the purple sky. She 
sat on a stone, I on the grass at her feet. The 
breeze, soft, clinging, fragrant, blew her hair 
about her face and chased tiny shadows across 
her dimpled chin. Her eyes were as blue as the 
zenith, as deep and tender as the haze of the val- 
leys. It seemed then that the earth was only 
goodness and beauty and love and joy. To-day 
was sweet, and all to-morrows should be as 
to-day. But we were young, and the years 
were long and wrought great changes; and it 
is easy to love, but hard to be brave and patient 
and true. 

So sorrow and darkness came, and the 
knowledge that the real tragedies of life lie not 
in defeat or failure or death, but in broken 
faith and in thoughtless cmelty to those we 
love. 




The Lure of To-Morrow. 

NE'S ideals and ambitions change 
wonderfully with the passing of 
the years. The boy growing to 
manhood outgrows his ideas of 
life and his aspirations for himself just as 
surely as he outgrows his coat and shoes. 
The man, too, if his spirit be not wholly stag- 
nant, flows on, almost imperceptibly to himself 
perhaps, from one viewpoint and one stage of 
desire to another and another; and while each 
successive conception or longing is likely to 
be closely related to the one preceding it, this 
gradual progress may lead him on to opinions 
and hopes as different from those of his youth 
as the marshes at the river's mouth are differ- 
ent from the hills among which it had its 
source. 

Generally, too, the aspirations of youth are 
lofty and picturesque, and those of maturity 
are flat and commonplace. The young col- 
legian, if our jests have any basis in fact, has 



76 Field-Path and Highway. 

an ambition to reform his fellow men, to 
change the destiny of the State, to make him- 
self famous and powerful. We laugh at the 
ambition; but for all that it seems to us a 
splendid thing, a much more splendid thing, 
than the modest ambition of the same collegian 
when he has become a man of middle age and 
is likely to be ceaselessly busy with such prob- 
lems as those of family support, neighborhood 
welfare, and the adjustment of his work to his 
strength. Truly these are small affairs com- 
pared with the guiding of the State or the writ- 
ing of an epic. Yet is it so certain, after all, 
that because the life current flows more 
smoothly, with less of rippling sound and bub- 
bling brilliance, it flows with less power or is 
less pure and refreshing? 

This is the preachment which was meant to 
be a logical conclusion to the matter following 
— that is, that the desire to do a little thing, if 
the thing be necessary to be done, may be as 
laudable and as truly heroic as the desire to do 
a great thing. 



The Lure of To-Morrozv. yy 

The moral has been placed at the beginning 
lest any should fail to come to it, and also to 
assure those who dislike consequential moraliz- 
ings that the worst they have to fear has been 
reached. If the moral displease any, let him 
leave the fable unread: for beyond the lesson 
he will find only the happy recollections of a 
boyhood day and the soberer meditations of one 
of manhood's leisure hours, and these recol- 
lections and meditations, to one who has not felt 
the like, may prove but tiresome things. 

I. 

Down into the little hollow, carpeted thick 
with leaves of lustrous brown and darkened 
red and shaded yellow, the sunlight crept to 
cling and linger. The few leaves yet hanging 
on the oaks and dogwoods and hickories loos- 
ened themselves one by one and came down to 
the earth softly, slowly, turning round and 
round, sinking to rest with only the faintest 
murmur of content. Now and then a nut or 
an acorn fell swiftly with a sharp click. A 



78 Field-Path and Highway. 

wood sparrow or two moved about in the under- 
growth; from a distance came the chirring of 
a squirrel; a noisy jay flew overhead once with 
a sharp, hoarse cry. The winding woodland 
ways were hazy with the autumn smokiness, 
softly bright with the slanting sunshine, restful 
with drowsy warmth, sweet with the faint fra- 
grance of leaf and bough and ripened forest 
fruit. From the leaf -flecked masses at the base 
of the white oaks on up to their topmost glis- 
tening twigs the peace of perfect maturity and 
of ended effort reached, filling the hollow as 
completely and as perceptibly as did the gold 
and purple of the sun- woven haze. 

The boy sitting on the old log with the gun 
across his knees let the squirrel grate on un- 
heeded, and did not even raise his eyes to watch 
the course of the screaming jay. He seemed a 
part of the landscape, so still he was, so dream- 
ily intent on things of other days. But while 
the dreams of tree and shrub were plainly rem- 
iniscent of summer, his thoughts were all of the 
future. 



The Lure of To-Morrow. 79 

One would scarcely have fancied it from his 
idle hands and listless pose, but he was even 
then looking at himself through the eyes of 
happy anticipation and seeing a man strong, 
active, wise, standing like Saul among his fel- 
lows, and leading them by force of his own 
great name wherever he would. Parts of the 
pictures moving before his eyes were vague and 
fomiless: but always there was in the center, 
clearly outlined, the image of the man he meant 
to be. And ever this man was doing some he- 
roic thing, something from which lesser men 
shrank or for which their strength would not 
avail. 

Not once did he falter — this brave, wise man 
— not once did he stoop to aught that was little 
or mean. True to his own high ideals, he, the 
champion of a people's rights, faced, calm and 
resolute, the forces of evil and, though sorely 
beset and often hindered, marched steadfastly 
on to complete victory. Standing before the 
men of his time when they were in the wrong, 
this hero spoke to them with words so wise, so 



8o Field-Path and Highway. 

true, so sweetly persuasive, and so irresistibly 
convincing that all saw the soundness of his 
reason, and those who had come to question or 
to scoff remained to pay him the homage of 
applause. 

So the pictures passed, one after another, as 
clear unto the spirit's rapt vision as were the 
clustered tree trunks and the inviting vistas 
between them to the placid eyes that looked 
out into the forest's depths. Statesman, orator, 
soldier, poet, counselor, friend of all good, foe 
of all evil — what was not this man to be ? The 
best of every hero the lad had known went into 
his make-up; he could not but be greater than 
them all. 

A vain dream? Yes, but a noble one — one 
of that splendid race of dreams tO' which all 
our worthiest actions and our truest ambitions 
trace their language. Heroic deeds are not 
born of unworthy ideals, nor did shameful hope 
ever beget noble achievement. 

So the afternoon crept gently by, while the 
brooding sunshine paled and died away; and 



The Lure of To-Morrow. 8i 

the boy, with gun and game forgotten, held 
high converse with the noblest of mankind. 

A glorious dream; for however much it 
might fail of realization, his life could not but 
be better because of it. 

When at length the sun dropped out of sight 
and he waked from his reverie, rose from his 
primitive seat, and turned his face homeward, 
his eyes were those of one who has seen a vi- 
sion, and his step was that of a conquering 
king. 

II. 

A gray day in mid-October with threats of 
rain and hints of coming frost. The woods 
were mostly green as yet, although the dog- 
woods and sourwoods were brilliant in red 
and the walnuts and hickories were light yel- 
low. Other trees, too, were preparing them- 
selves for the autumn festival, unusually de- 
layed. The persimmons and sassafras bushes 
were splotched with brownish red and dark 
yellow; lemon-tinted leaves spotted the sweet 
gums ; the ash trees at a little distance showed 
6 



82 Field-Paih and Highway. 

silvery gray with hints of rose ; even a few of 
the oaks displayed patches of gay color against 
their sober green. To the man striding rapidly 
down the narrow footpath through the wood 
the trunks all seemed gray — light gray with 
tints of green those of the ash and sweet gum, 
darker those of the aged chestnuts, almost black 
those of the slender walnut and stalwart black 
oak. Under his feet bright, new-fallen leaves 
lay on the faded foliage of former autumns. 

The man, walking with quick, decisive steps, 
noticed all these things, but gave them little real 
heed. He was too busy with his plans and 
dreams. Little, indeed, did these dreams resem- 
ble the gorgeous pictures that unrolled them- 
selves before the boyish vision. The man had 
no thought of leading his fellows, of swaying 
them with fervid eloquence, of dazzling them 
with brilliant achievements. He found it hard 
enough, in the rasping contact of business life, 
to make those with whom> he dealt sure of his 
honesty and good will. It was not always easy 
at the same time to render to others what he 



The Lure of To-Morrow. 83 

felt due to them and to protect himself from 
injury. Taking an earnest interest in the great 
world movements of the race, he hoped to exert 
no influence beyond the narrow circle of his 
own acquaintance. He dwelt as fondly on the 
idea of providing a better school for his own 
and his neighbors' children as the boy had dwelt 
on the inspiring message of the man who was 
to bend wrong-thinking multitudes to his will. 

Even the darling dream of the man — the one 
dearest ambition, whose promised realization 
now lent vigor to his step and luster to his eye 
— would have seemed to the boy a trifling thing. 
It was only to make a little home, to add to its 
beauty and charm and cheer, to make it a place 
of comfort and repose to those he loved, to 
watch it grow ever sweeter and dearer to them, 
and to have it send abroad from open door and 
shining window a light of welcome or of kindly 
sympathy to every guest or passer-by. Should 
not any man in this land of opportunity be able 
to do all this and to count it but part of his day's 
work and achievement? So it would have 



84 Field-Path and Highway. 

seemed to the boy ; but to the man the prospect 
was one of supreme allurement. Could he but 
do this, he would feel that all his years of effort 
had been well repaid. 

By no means an unworthy ambition; but 
could it be the deepest and most abiding this 
strong man knew ? He said to himself that it 
was; but perhaps he was mistaken, for there 
still remained to him one boyish dream. To 
write something, however small it might be, 
"that the world would not willingly let die ;" to 
leave behind him with even a few of earth's 
myriads one little gleam of cheerful memory 
and a half -forgotten name — deep down in his 
heart this longing still abode and would not let 
him rest. Often and often he had felt that the 
miracle was wrought and had written down the 
wonderful new thought with eager hand and 
panting breath, glad beyond the conception of 
those who think only of the sordid things of 
life. But ever, when the spell had been broken, 
when the instant's white-fused heat had died 
out of the fashioned words, he had looked upon 



The Lure of To-Morrow. 85 

them and sighed and known that the dream had 
not yet come true. For always the finest and 
purest of the golden thought or the crystal 
emotion had been lost in the making of phrase 
and sentence; and always the written word, 
form and polish it as he might, was lacking in 
the celestial gleam. 

Still the dream endured. Perhaps, he was 
thinking even now, when the roses should gar- 
land the fence of the cottage yard and the 
village children should stop to watch the pi- 
geons on the roof, there might come the finer 
inspiration and life's great aspiration be real- 
ized. 

And so, indeed, it might ; for the possibilities 
of youth are beyond the solemn computation of 
the wise, and he is still young who retains even 
one of his vouthful dreams. 




The Chords of Memory. 

|N places the branches of the oaks 
and chestnuts met across the nar- 
row road, and here my horse 
walked over a rustling carpet of 
yellow and brown and dark, dull red. Again, 
the road wound along the hillside, and I could 
look down into the gray and brown clearings 
of the valleys or across above them to the op- 
posite hills glorious in all the colors of the 
mountain autumn. Once I rode for a little 
while along the crest of one of the higher 
ridges and saw, beyond the gold and crimson 
foothills, the mighty summits of the Smokies 
rising in purple majesty until they faded away 
into an indistinct union with the purpler sky. 

The leaves fell ceaselessly and with a soft, 
whispering sound that seemed part of the pre- 
vailing silence. Once or twice a jay called 
harshly or darted, a gust of vivid blue, through 
the glowing branches. Shy quail and timid 



88 Field-Path and Highway. 

ground squirrels, with coloring as rich as that 
of the leaves, scurried fearfully away at my 
approach, and gray squirrels whisked them- 
selves out of sight around the trunks of pro- 
tecting trees. A yoke of little oxen I met, 
dragging a two-wheeled cart, on which were a 
bag of corn, the boy who was driving, and two 
little girls in pink dresses and sunbonnets. And 
a mile farther on a long, lanky mountaineer, 
clad in a striped shirt and blue trousers which 
lacked two inches of meeting his shoes, crossed 
the road in front of me. He had an old squirrel 
rifle on his shoulder, and passed without turn- 
ing his head. The rest of the way I saw no one, 
except once, half a mile down the valley, I saw 
a woman building a fire under a big kettle out 
in the yard. 

I was just beginning to wonder if I had 
missed the way when I saw the little clearing 
far up on the side of the hill — the gray cabin 
with the orchard behind it and the flaunting 
cosmos and rich-hued marigolds in front. Half 
a dozen hounds sprang from nowhere into loud- 



The Chords of Memory. 89 

mouthed evidence as I rode up, and then my 
friend, the mountaineer, came around the cor- 
ner of the house. 

He seated me in a spHt-bottomed chair on the 
narrow porch, and while the dogs gravely ex- 
amined me he told of their wonderful qualities. 
I know nothing of hounds except that they 
make fine music when they run of nights ; but a 
kindred spirit of vagabondage had drawn their 
owner and myself together. We both loved the 
woods and the long, leisurely days of idle pre- 
tense at hunting. So in a world of men who 
seem to have little time to get acquainted with 
the kindly old earth and small desire to quit 
working and thinking and just to live through 
the mellow, rich-flavored autumn days, we two 
had become in a short week or so the best of 
friends — friends who did not pretend to under- 
stand each other, but who were glad to accept 
and be accepted on trust. 

Around the corner of the cabin came, as the 
hunter had come, his wife, wrinkled, keen-eyed, 
thin, and with the sharp, whining speech so 



90 Field-Path and Highway. 

common among the women of the hills, and his 
daughter, graceful, slender, with eyes that 
sparkled and cheeks as rosy as the apples she 
carried. Beautiful she was with that beauty 
which is purely of the flesh, and which, 
among the women of her class, usually fades 
so early. I envied her sweetheart, but I could 
not but feel sorry for her. Scarcely eighteen, 
"she Was a woman now, with the hopes and the 
heart of a woman." At forty she would be 
old, wrinkled, perhaps hard of feature and 
sharp of speech like her mother. 

We sat there eating apples, crisp and juicy 
and flavored with all the aromatic wine that 
nature could distill from the soil and the air 
of the mountains, and saw the sun go down in 
a far-flung splendor of flame and scarlet be- 
hind hills where orange and red and gold and 
green were mingled in a prodigal profusion of 
richness. Then as the western sky faded from 
flame to rose, from rose to pink, and from pink 
to a clear, cold gray, we saw the darkness thick- 
en in the valley and slowly creep up the hillsides 



The Chords of Memory. gi 

until the world was an indistinct tumult of 
formless shadows and the stars shone bright 
and keen from the depths of the infinite vast- 
ness. 

We ate supper in the kitchen with the flames 
clambering about the pot that swung from the 
old crane in the fireplace and the dogs lying on 
the hearth. The meal finished, the mountaineer 
and I went into the little front room, where 
another fire was burning; for warm as the 
afternoon had been, the air now had in it the 
touch of frost. 

"Must I bring the lamp in here?" the girl 
asked. 

"No," said the hunter. 

She withdrew, and he went over to a chest 
in the corner. I had not thought of him before 
as a musician, but when I saw the old brown 
fiddle I was glad. He handled it with the ten- 
derness of a lover, and there in the dimness of 
the firelight his grizzled face took on a new 
aspect and his eyes grew softer at once and 
brighter. Out in the woods he was a warrior, 



92 Field-Path and Highway. 

pitting his skill and strength against that of 
the animal he would kill or capture ; here he was 
a king, and the marvelous and mystic bow did 
his bidding. 

Old dance tunes he played first — "Arkansas 
Traveler," "Farmer John," and "Sourwood 
Mountain" — melodies that have grown, because 
of their intimate relationship with the soil, to 
be a part of the life of the people; folklore 
tunes that are handed down "by ear" from one 
player to another just as the old ballads were 
passed on from one singer to another, to be 
changed and adapted by each according to his 
taste and feeling. 

These were the old strains I had heard when 
I first tried to dance the Virginia reel with a 
girl whose bright eyes were long since clouded 
by a life of shame and sorrow. And one night 
I had sat outside in the honeysuckle-scented 
shadows and taken my first kiss from another 
fiddler's daughter while he played "Sourwood 
Mountain" inside and the couples swung and 
changed and promenaded in the dusty dimness 



The Chords of Memory. 93 

of the lantern-lighted room. Ah, what a girl 
she was! Dark hair that rippled and waved, 
eyes brown and soft and full of dreams, and 
a slow, sweet voice and little hands that trem- 
bled when I touched them! That was a deli- 
cious summer. But the fiddler, her father, was 
a ne'er-do-well, and he moved five whole miles 
away from where I lived; and a few years 
later she married a big, raw-boned fellow with 
a voice that grated like a rasp, and they moved 
to Texas. 

So are born our dreams of love, and so they 
die. But as I remembered this and a hundred 
other incidents of those early days, when there 
was always the promise of to-morrow to heal 
the disappointment of to-day, the old fiddler 
wandered off into other strains — plaintive 
chords that sighed with vain wistf ulness, break- 
ing now and then into sobs of pain or the long 
moan of helpless endurance. There is many an 
untaught master of the violin who can put into 
sound the thoughts and emotions that no master 
has ever yet put into words; and as the old 



94 Field-Path and Highway. 

man went on I knew that he was telHng the 
story of his life — the real life, that of the emo- 
tions. He let the last long wail die away into 
silence and sat gazing into the fire for a long 
time. 

"When I was about twenty," he said at 
length in a voice I had never heard, "ol' man 
Wheeler that you saw 3aste'day lived over 
back of Gray's Knob, and his Lizzie was the 
purtiest girl in the whole kentry. I ust to go 
to see her onct ev'ry week and sometimes 
twict, till I had a racket with the ol' man, an' 
he'd never let me go back. I'd git to see 
Lizzie now and then, but not much, for he 
watched her like a hawk. Then in the spring 
I went off up in the mountains to peel tanbark ; 
and one night, jist about this time, we was all 
settin' around the fire and some feller was 
playin' the fiddle when Bill Wheeler (he was her 
brother) come in. He called me out and said, 
'Lizzie's sick and wants to see you. The ol' 
man said for you to come.' We rode all that 
night, but when we got there she was dead." 



The Chords of Memory. 95 

The old man wiped his eyes frankly and 
without shame, but as his wife opened the 
kitchen door he picked up the fiddle again. 

''She used to sing this," he said softly and 
slipped into the tender chords of ''Sherwin 
Valley :" 

"Then remember the sweet Sherwin Valley, 
And the girl who has loved you so true." 

Another girl had sung that song in the days 
of long ago — a girl with tender eyes and gentle 
ways — and she too was silent for evermore. 
I knew that the golden leaves of the big 
tulip trees were even now falling on her 
grave. 

When I had gone to bed, I lay and looked 
into the fire as brand after brand darkened and 
faded, and slowly there came to me the reali- 
zation of why my friend so loved the woods 
and the streams and the silent companionship 
of the hills. To have dreamed and hoped, 
and to have seen the dream fade into nothing- 
ness, and felt the hope wither into the dead 



96 Field-Path and Highway. 

certainty of impossibility is to have lived a life 
that cannot be shared with men, that asks in its 
unmeasured sadness for the solace of the vast, 
kindly earth and the enduring comfort of the 
infinite, tender sky. 



DEC 26 1912 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 

PreservationTechnologie; 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATIC 

111 Thomson Park Drive 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS^ 

018 392 011 A 










